Sausage - Round 2


 
E

Ethan G

TVWBB Super Fan
Hi everyone. I did my first attempt at homemade sausage last fall (about 25 lbs. of bratwurst, Polish, and an elk sausage). It turned out great! So when there was a very rainy weekend in the forecast, I planned another sausage experiment.

I made three different kinds - about 11 lbs. of spekacek (a Czech recipe similar to Polish sausage), 6 lbs. of elk/jalapeno/cheddar, and 4 lbs. of andouille.

No action pictures, only one pre-cooked shot. I used the KitchenAid grinding/stuffing attachment. I like the grinder just fine, but this was the second and LAST time I will use that stuffing contraption :mad:

Spekacek after being stuffed:

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Spekacek cooked:

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Andouille cooked:

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Andouille close up:

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Elk sausage (I got the wrong kind of cheddar cheese, it was finely grated so you really can't see it):

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All taste good, although the elk is a little dryer than the batch I made last fall. My first batch was from backstrap meat that was fresh and had never been frozen. This batch used some unknown cuts that a friend gave me and had been in the freezer for 4-5 months, so I think that was the difference. The spekacek is outstanding (half beef, half pork, with strong flavors of pepper and garlic) and the andouille is also very good.
 
Those sausages look fantastic, Ethan! I've got around 15lbs of ground venison in the freezer that I'm planning on turning into sausages.
 
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Ethan, the sausage looks great!! I like the texture you got there, care to share any details? What size grind? Grind once or twice? How'd you mix?

If I could consistently get links that turned out looking like yours, I think I'd make sausage more often!

Rich
 
That's some super looking sausage. Will be trying my hand at sausage making in the near future.
 
Thanks for the compliments!

Rich - I used the coarse plate for the KA grinder, and ground once. I used lean meat, and then there's an Asian grocery store in my area that sells ground pork fat for $1/lb. It comes in a meat pack and is very coarsely ground (beads or chunks about 1/4" thick). After weighing the fat comparable to the meat, I crumbled the fat with my hands into chunks about the size of the meat cubes. I mixed it in with the meat as I ground it. Then in a red plastic bowl (the ones my kids use to eat popcorn) I mixed everything. I weighed out all of the spices, curing agent, etc. and mixed it with the required amount of ice water. It was kind of a slurry that I dumped over the meat, then with gloved hands kneaded it by hand until it was well mixed. 30 minutes in the freezer, then into the stuffer.
 
Ethan nice job on the sausage. It looks delicious. I love making sausage. It is so labor intensive that we haven't made it in a long time. But our homemade sausage is always better than grocery store sausage. I love to watch You Tube videos on sausage making. There are a lot of cool techniques and really cool smokers.
 
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